Dame of Owls (8 page)

             
“I think after a certain point it was for my own good.” He kissed the crown of her head, his lips gentle against one of her feathers. “I don’t think I got the bad end of the bargain, really. And we’re safe here, until we can get this all sorted out.”

             
She damn well hoped so. He took her hand, cradling her calloused fingers in his rough ones, and kissed her palm. Kissed each finger tip, kissed knuckle and joint until she could feel her own tepid blush.

             
“So hey,” he said against her skin, “we didn’t really get the chance to do this properly.”

             
No, they hadn’t. She looped her arms around his neck. The kiss was soft, not hesitant like their first or hungry like their second, but indulgent. They were well indoors, and there was no telling how much time was theirs. Sid sank into the taste of him, the firmness of his lips and the feeling of his stubble ghosting across her cheeks as they moved with one another.

             
She licked her way into his mouth, ran her tongue along those intriguing teeth, felt the predator promise of them. They seemed to stay like that forever, just kissing in a tangle of tongues, her fingers twining in the hair at the nape of his neck, his hands spanning the breadth of her hips. Sid couldn’t remember the last time she spent this long kissing. She couldn’t remember if she ever had. It sank a shimmering heat into her belly, so alien to her body but such a welcome, slow burn.

             
Chris pulled away first. Sid spent a moment with her forehead against his collar bone, breathing deeply. Trying to regain her equilibrium. Trying to memorize the scent of him.

             
“I like your dress,” he murmured into her ear. “How do we get it off?”

             
Sid huffed out a laugh and grabbed his wrists, guiding his hands up to the small of her back. The ties were straightforward, and he only struggled with the buttons for a few tense moments before she could pull her arms out of the short sleeves. The top pooled down around her waist, exposing her pert breasts. She felt a flash of odd modesty; she didn’t have the most generous bosom granted to a woman, but it had never bothered her before.

             
It didn’t seem to bother Chris now. He ran his hands over her sides and up her belly to cup a breast in each hand, rubbing his thumbs in soft circles. Sid hummed soft appreciation. The Chris moved his hands to her shoulders and guided her gently backwards until the back of her knees hit the bed. Sid let herself tumble backwards, eager for him.

             
She pulled herself across the bed to rest against the pillows, shedding the outer skirts of her gown as she went. Left with only a thin linen slip, she felt gloriously bare. Chris climbed onto the bed and knelt over her, grinning like an idiot until she reached up, grabbed the back of his neck, and pulled him down to her chest.

             
He proved himself a tease, licking the curve of one breast, the valley between them, a circle of the opposite areola before finally taking a nipple into his mouth. Sid gasped as he sucked softly, flicking his tongue over the hardening nub. He raised a hand to roll her other nipple between his thumb and forefinger, electricity tingling through both sides of her. When he nipped down oh-so-lightly, she squirmed.

             
Chris kissed her collar bones, her nipples, each rib on his way down her body, stuck his tongue in her belly button and chuckled when she pulled his hair in protest. She helped him hike her slip up around her hips, and he shucked off her undergarments in one swift movement. One kiss to each hip bone, one pressed right above the curly mound of her pubic hair.

             
“No feathers here.”

             
She pulled his hair again.

             
By the time he finally put his mouth on her, she was beyond ready. She was ready to amend their unequal clothing situation and climb on top of him, but he held her hips down and licked an exquisite line from her entrance to her clit. He swirled his tongue around it, licking it hard, soft, hard again, pressure never
enough.
Sid was seeing stars by the time she was done letting him have his fun.

             
Fisting her hands in his shirt, she pulled him up to kiss him hard. She could taste herself on her tongue. One day she’d return the favor. Right now she was going to explode if they didn’t get down to business. The way she was devouring his mouth must have been a clue, because Chris undid his own trousers and shoved them off his legs. Reaching down between them, Sid took him in hand and guided him between her spread legs, nudging his engorged tip into her wetness.

             
“Sid,” he moaned into her hair, breath tickling her feathers.

             
She wrapped her legs around his waist and helped him thrust into her hard. Not hard enough to satisfy.

             
“More!” she demanded.

             
Chris obliged. He put all his strength into the roll of his hips, used one hand to cant her hips up and the other to steady himself against the headboard.

             
“Ready?” he asked, smirk infuriatingly attractive.

             
She ground herself against him just to feel his length inside of her. “Come on!”

             
His every movement was sweet delight, rough and strong and perfect. He pressed her down into the bed and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and moved her hips up to meet his thrusts.

             
Chris kissed her again, tongue in her mouth, and she swore she came just from all the wonderful pressure. Lights popped behind her eyelids. Her whole body tingled and shuddered as he continued to thrust until he, too, found release. For awhile they lay there, panting, Chris’s head against her shoulder and all his weight on her and in, before he finally had to pull out of her and collapse beside her on the bed.

             
Sid used a discrete corner of the sheet to tidy herself up, then rolled over and molded herself to his side.

             
“Let’s take a nap.”

             
He hummed his agreement, eyes already closed.

---

              Sid had expected her paranoia to abate after good, fun sex. If she’d been winding herself up because of lust or some such, surely her creeping unease would have been banished by now. Instead, she woke up next to Chris with the same chilling certainty that had gripped her before. She wanted to blame Ruby. She
did
blame Ruby, but it was getting harder and harder to imagine Ruby doing anything this melodramatic without a purpose.

             
Chris had an arm thrown over her chest, their legs tangled together. Sid ran a thumb over his knuckles and considered her options. She could take him to a safe point in the Thoroughfare and drop him off in the mortal realms with a kiss goodbye and a promise to call, but that would only leave him vulnerable to the Summer Court. And why? Her thoughts caught on that like cotton on thorns. What was the Summer Court doing, and why wasn’t it inciting outrage?

             
She could go to the queen again, but the queen was a woman not likely to budge once she’d made up her mind. It came with being royalty.

             
There was, however, one source of information yet available to her. If they weren’t already dead. She nudged Chris awake.

             
“Hey,” she whispered as he cracked his eyes open, “want to go do something foolhardy and outside the boundaries of the law?”

             
He gave her a sleepy thumbs up. “Cool.”

             
They tumbled out of bed and into their clothes. Sid chanced a peek out of Chris’s window. Darkness blanketed the courtyard, fluffy snowflakes blocking the moon and stars. Perfect. Any fairy worth their salt would be at one party or another, and anyone not worth their salt wouldn’t dare to question the Dame of Owls.

             
“Where are we going?” Chris asked her in an undertone as they slipped down the hallway and then through a small door that led to the servants’ halls.

             
“The dungeon.”

             
“Ah, well then.”

---

              Sid could tell Chris was disturbed by the cells. He was doing a very good job at hiding it, but she’d been too close to him now not to notice the way his shoulders tensed, and how he kept a very precise distance away from the bars. With a fae companion Sid might have chalked that up to the iron, but if she wasn’t affected then he certainly wouldn’t be.

             
The iron was what made their holding cells self-sustaining. Every few hours one of the half-fae guardsmen made the rounds, but no full blooded fae was expected to step foot down here. It would sap their strength slowly but inexorably, a pain that Juniper had described as an unending ache, like a body gone for years without rest.

             
The Summer Fae were tucked as far away from civilized people as the guards could get them. The two knights shivered in the very last cell, curled up on themselves and thinner than they’d been last Sid had seen them. She wasn’t moved to pity, but Chris’s face was twisting up into something like sympathy, or disgust.

             
“Hasn’t anyone been feeding them?” he asked.

             
“Fae don’t require food in Court lands.”

             
Though, now that Sid thought about it, perhaps Summer Fae would need sustenance in the Winter Court. Any normal fae, when surrounded by cold iron, probably could have used some energy. Some comfort, if nothing else. Well, it wasn’t her problem that they’d come into her territory, threatened the lives of her friends, and gotten themselves caught. She’d offer them the only mercy she had in her.

             
Sid crouched down, reached an arm through the bars, and nudged the knobby spine of one of the knights.

             
“Wake up,” she commanded.

             
The knight uttered a curse.

             
“Wake up, or I leave you here to rot away in slow obscurity and you’ll have lost your chance at any dignity.”

             
The knight continued to ignore her, but his companion rolled over and pulled himself up to sit against the wall. The Lily Knight, finally at her mercy. His eyes were hazy, but he focused on her with great difficulty.

             
“What do you want with us?” he asked, his voice a thin, cracking wheeze.

             
“That depends on what you wanted with us,” Sid said.

             
Chris stepped forward, curling one hand carefully around an iron bar. “With me.”

             
“Why do you think we know?”

             
“I’m a knight.” Sid leaned forward, bracing herself on the bars. “I’m a damn loyal knight, but I’ve got my limits. I’m not going to go marching into enemy territory after a piece of mortal manflesh without a very compelling reason.”

             
“Refusing the queen is a death sentence.”

             
Some things were the same in every country. “And coming here wasn’t?” Sid rapped a knuckle against iron. “This isn’t?”

             
“Let us help you,” Chris said, all earnest.

             
“How could you possibly help us?”

             
“You won’t get a hero’s death, or a martyr’s.” Sid stood up to better look down on their prisoner. “The queen wants you kept quiet. A quiet death and quiet ashes. There won’t be anything to remember you by. I wouldn’t be surprised if she leaves you down here and sees just how long it takes the iron to take away your lungs’ will to breathe and your heart’s will to beat.”

             
And quite frankly, she hoped they fucking choked on it, but she needed their answers.

             
“We might not be able to get you home,” Chris said, “but…”

             
He let the promise linger. Sid wondered if he’d done that on purpose, letting them fill in what they needed to hear, or if he was just that guileless. For a purported criminal, Chris didn’t have a close relationship with death. It was part of what she liked about him, and coming in handy. She hoped he wouldn’t take too much offense when she pulled the rug out from under these bastards.

             
“I am a Lady Knight. I am a descendant of the house of the Dame Aventurine.” Sid savored the knight’s sour frown. “If I walk away from you now, no one else is coming to speak with you. I am, quite frankly, your last chance. I suggest you take it.”

             
The knight stared at them long and hard, his gaze only occasionally wandering over to his companion. His dying companion, if Sid had any guess, in an excruciating amount of pain. Perhaps camaraderie actually meant something to the Summer Knights, though it would be news to her.